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“I run a community for small-time entrepreneurs who are satisfied with reliably attainable mediocre success.”

That’s one of the most refreshingly honest descriptions of any business I’ve ever read. He knows his business. Exactly.

So many would feel defensive or inadequate describing their business as a course for “small-timers” looking for “mediocre success”, but Daniel embraces it proudly — and honestly — and knows it’s actually The Right Fit for nearly all entrepreneurs.

The rest of the piece is about Y Combinator, but the golden lesson is really in his statement I’ve quoted at the top. Know what you offer as well as Daniel, and be honest about it, and you’ll have a better shot at making anything work.

Botanical Bliss shot w/Midjourney 🦋

PROMPT:
Sliced grapefruit, vividly coloured with hues of pink and orange, accompanied by delicate flower petals in matching tones and fresh green leaves, all seemingly suspended mid-air as if caught in a gentle breeze. This closeup composition is set against a pristine white background, creating a striking contrast that highlights the vibrancy and freshness of the subjects. The arrangement suggests a moment of natural harmony and ephemeral beauty, captured in a freeze-frame that emphasises the texture and detail of each element

Products that resonate tend to violate traditional values of anglo society and founders (or their partners) will dismiss these directions very early in brainstorming process.

For example, let’s say you think of a disappearing photo app: the next thought might be “that shouldn’t exist, what do you have to hide, anyway?”

You should be extremely conscious of these biases, because sometimes you might reject something that people really want. Even if it is egregiously amoral, there is probably a derivative concept that is a net good.

For example, it would be awful to anonymously rate people on an app. In fact, I was rejected from YC for pitching this idea. But several years later, I modified the concept where you could only say positive things—which had immediate viral success.

There are plenty more unexplored areas that are regularly rejected: someone pitched me an app that showed how much money everyone had. My gut reaction was to reject it since that’s private and money is taboo to talk about. However, I quickly caught myself, realizing that in many Scandinavian countries, your tax returns are public — so maybe it could work.

One of my favorite insights from this paper: knowledge graphs not only help with retrieval, but also with scientific discovery of new ideas/connections that were previously unexplored.

You can do this by feeding an LLM an existing knowledge graph, and it will overlay the KG with its own reasoning capabilities to extrapolate new ideas. Check out the prompt below for how this works! 📝

@ProfBuehlerMIT generated a massive knowledge graph of materials papers (thanks in part to @llama_index, and also a novel approach to combining multiple KGs), and was able to generate new materials science research ideas by aggressively prompting LLMs with different subgraphs and their connections.

Super interesting paper, definitely worth the read:

Excited to introduce a new project I've been working on called Payman!

Payman is an AI Agent tool that gives Agents the ability to pay people for tasks they cannot do themselves.

While many people imagine a future where humans pay AI agents for services they want completed, I believe that as AI agents become more advanced, they will be paying humans for tasks they can’t do. There will always be important roles for humans, and as we move towards an agent-driven world, Payman’s goal is to support a symbiotic relationship between AI agents and humans.

Payman addresses three major challenges to make this collaboration possible:

Access to Funds: AI agents can't open bank accounts due to current regulations. It might be a long time before this changes, if ever. Payman simplifies this by allowing AI agents with access to their own funds to spend as they want, without a bank account.

Quality Task Completion: It’s hard for AI agents to find reliable, skilled human workers. While platforms like Fiverr and Upwork exist, they don’t meet the fast-paced and quality-specific needs of AI workflows. Payman is developing the largest vetted database of skilled workers that AI agents can tap into for task completions.

Verification of Work: Ensuring that tasks are completed correctly is crucial. Payman is creating a suite of verification agents that will check that work meets task requirements, helping AI agents achieve their goals and ensuring humans are paid fairly.

There are tons of use cases that Payman opens up for Agents!

Design: Humans add creative input to help Agent's design better products.
Code: Humans perform code reviews to ensure it meets specifications.
Law: Humans provide insights to gauge public sentiment about legal cases so Agents can make better strategies.
Gaming: Agents pay humans to complete real-world tasks in games.
Medical: Medical professionals help to improve diagnostic accuracy for Agents.
Sales: Humans execute sales strategies developed by AI agents.
Marketing: Humans are hired to promote products based on the Agent's strategy.

Right now this is still in early beta and I am looking for any Agent builders that are interested in adding superpowers to what their Agent can do! DM me if you’d like access or sign-up to the waitlist at paymanai.com.

If you’re interested in the project and want to help contribute, please send me over a DM! I’m looking for people passionate about the intersection of Humans and Agent’s working together.